1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a handwritten signature authentication program, method and apparatus performing registration and authentication by automatically generating a user ID based on the number of characters and contents of the characters of signature information that is handwritten and input.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, a method performing authentication according to the characteristic amounts of the handwriting of a signature is known as one type of biometrics authentication (a method authenticating a user by using a physical characteristic of a human being, such as a fingerprint, retina, iris, voice print, etc., when the user accesses a network or starts up a personal computer). In this case, checks are made by making comparisons among characteristic amounts such as a handwriting shape, a handwriting velocity, a handwriting acceleration, a handwriting pressure, etc. of the handwriting of a signature when registration is made, and those of the handwriting of a signature when attempts are made to obtain authentication.
Additionally, in this case, it is general that also a user ID is input before or after the handwritten signature is input, and the user ID information and the handwriting information of the corresponding handwritten signature are notified to an authentication system, whereby authentication is performed by making a check between a pre registered user ID and the handwriting information.
FIG. 1 explains such a conventional authentication system using inputs of a user ID and a handwritten signature. In the authentication system 1 shown in this figure, a user ID 4 “abcde00001” is first input by being handwritten with a dedicated pen not shown or selected with keys, and a kanji character signature 5 “” (“Fujitsu Taro”) or an English signature 5′ “Fujitsu” is input next to a handwritten input device 3 connected to a data input/display device 2.
Information, which are obtained from the inputs of the user ID 4 “abcde00001”, and the kanji character signature 5 “” (“Fujitsu Taro”) or the English signature 5′ “Fujitsu”, are registered to the storage device of a host device 6 such as a mainframe computer, etc. Note that the signature information obtained from the kanji signature 5 or the English signature 5′ are handwriting components such as a handwriting shape, a handwriting velocity, a handwriting acceleration, a handwriting pressure, etc. of the signature. Next, when the person whose name is “” (in kanji character) or “Fujitsu” (in English character) attempts to obtain authentication with a signature, he again handwrites and inputs the user ID 4 “abcde00001”, and the kanji character signature 5 “” (“Fujitsu Taro”) or the English signature 5′ “Fujitsu” to the handwritten input device 3 of the data input/display device 2 in a similar manner as in the above described registration.
The information of the handwriting components of the kanji character signature 5 or the English signature 5′ are notified to the host device 6. The host device 6 reads the registered user ID which matches the user ID, and the registered signature information corresponding to the registered user ID based on the input user ID. Then, a check is made between the handwriting component data of the read registered signature information and those of the just input handwritten signature information, and a check result indicating a match or a mismatch is notified to the data input/display device 2.
In this case, a check is conventionally made according to a uniform comparative logic such that the degrees of similarity of the characteristic amounts of the handwriting components such as the above described handwriting shape, handwriting velocity, handwriting acceleration, and handwriting pressure when registration is made, and those of the handwriting components when authentication is requested are uniformly calculated and put into numeric values, and check and evaluation are made with totals of the numeric values.
Since a handwritten signature is biometrics information, the characteristic amounts of handwriting components appear in a variety of ways depending on an individual, and different characteristic amounts appear for each individual. With the uniform comparative logic such that evaluation is made with a total numeric value of the degrees of similarity of the characteristic amounts of the handwriting components as conventional, characteristics of each individual are difficult to appear, and optimum comparison and check cannot be made for each individual. Therefore, inconveniences such as rejection of authentication despite being an authentic person, acceptance of authentication despite being a different person, and the like may arise.
Additionally, as described above, a user who requests authentication must input a user ID as character information, and separately handwrite and input the signature registered in correspondence with the user ID. However, it is troublesome to input not only the signature that is originally expected to be sufficient for identifying an individual, but also the user ID.
Furthermore, since the user ID is originally data composed of characters or numeric values, which do not directly relate to a user himself, the user is apt to forget the user ID. Accordingly, the user erroneously inputs his user ID in many cases, which causes the troublesomeness such that the user must again input the user ID. There is also a problem from this viewpoint.